Mark Heisler: Lakers will always have Houston

The parade starts at Staples Center where the Lakers board floats taking them through the spectator-lined streets to the packed Coliseum, where they’ll show a replay of Dwight Howard bricking free throws down the stretch ...

In real life, their upset in Houston didn't change anything.

In Lakerdom, it was like the fans’ 2014 title.

The Lakers are still the Lakers with Kobe Bryant out, Steve Nash at 39 and 10 of the other 13 players assured of being cut for cap space at season’s end.

Dwight is still Dwight, having escaped from L.A. to a team assured of beating the Lakers by 10 games.

Laker fans still face a long season....

Like, who cares?

We’re 1-0 against Dwight!

He’s somebody else’s Dwightmare now, even if the Lakers would have been delighted to rebuild around a rebounding, shot-blocking, if problematic, force of nature.

Unfortunately for them, Dwight never would have been part of the program as a Laker.

Going so far as to suggest he’d stay if they amnestied Kobe, Dwight said it had to be all about him.

Actually, though Laker fans won’t storm anything but between Twitter and “SportsCenter,” it will seem as if they are.

Unfortunately for Dwight, who’s not malicious and doesn’t have a mean bone in his body ... or a clue ... he doesn’t have a clue about what’s coming. He now knows he wears red instead of gold and lives in Texas, which doesn’t have a state income tax ... even if he had to give up $30 million for that tax break.

(His peeps and sports writers assured him $10 million in tax savings made that OK, omitting the bottom line which had him out $20 mill.) Dwight is, of course, delighted to be with people he can ask stuff from without being told, “Great, but here’s how we do it on the Lakers.”

The Rockets say, “You want it, we’ll get it for you.”

Whatever. Dwight took 10.7 shots a game with the Lakers and is now taking the exact same 10.7.

Now for the really hard part ... Dwight only thinks he escaped from L.A.

Only his body left. His image has been taken hostage.

Even people who think Kobe was part of the problem – and I don’t – say Dwight must show he can win a title.

The Rockets are good but not that good (oh yeah, Dwight also made the wrong choice. Imagine him with the Warriors, who tried pulling it off at the end). It will never be the way it was when slights in the press prompted Magic fans to arise, as the Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Bianchi noted, to defend “our Dwight in shining armor.”

Magic fans lived in fear that he’d leave ... obvious as it was that he would ... and did, after turning it into an unprecedented two-season departure, in which he sabotaged both teams he played on.

For their part, Laker fans barely knew he was there.

They weren’t cold. They weren’t hot. The team had to put up those billboards, begging him to stay ... and was laughed at for doing it.

Welcome to Southern California where the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray used to write an annual Rose Bowl column, hoping the twilight wouldn’t shimmer too invitingly off the backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains, lest more people move out here.

Forget Kobe running anyone out of town. For Dwight, who was not only used to adoration but obsessed by it, the indifference of Laker fans had done that a long time before.

Yahoo’s Marc Spears just quoted a source saying that even before last spring’s meeting with the Lakers, Howard declared, “I'm already out of there. There's no reason to talk about what the Lakers could've done. I'm living with it. I'm happy where I'm at. I'm in a great place.”

Actually, he’s in a place reserved for big timers like Kobe, wherein much is demanded, not merely expected, daily.

Friday’s “SportsCenter,” the weather vane of yahoo reactions, featured a segment on “Dwight a leader?”

That’s a good one. Of course, he’s not a leader. Now, unfortunately for him, the world cares.

In another move ESPN reserves for prime targets, er, people in the news, Stephen A. Smith debated Skip Bayless on the topic, “Should Houston Play Howard In Fourth?”

I’m guessing one said the Rockets shouldn’t and the other that they should trade him to the first team that will take him.

How long can it be before Dwight sighs to himself, “What didn’t I like about Orlando again?”

The process is actually healthy for him, not to mention way overdue.

At last he has only two choices: Grow up or retire.

I expect him to start growing up, slowly and painfully, disappointing season by disappointing season.

Talking about pain and disappointment, yes, the Lakers must finish this season.